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Banks are hunting down their live customers like dogs
Really, it is not so much a matter of Whatever Happened the Banks, so much as whatever happened the banks? The first question is asked by boring people in the pub who have read all the disaster books and will explain the whole banking collapse to you if you stand still long enough.
But then there is a larger grouping: quieter, frequently older and yet more furious. This is the group which is asking: whatever happened the banks? These are my people: we live in the lower case.
We’re unfashionable, often technologically ignorant and our schedules allow us to go to our local branch of the bank during the day. And our local branch of the bank couldn’t think less of us if we had come to rob it. In fact it would think a whole lot more of us if we came to hold up the bank with sawn-off shotguns.
The banks have spent large sums on preventing bank robbers swanning in and out of the premises at will. They have installed a double-door security system, they’ve thought that much about them.
Your customer, on the other hand, is regarded as a nuisance and strongly discouraged. Some time ago, at a secret meeting, the banks declared war on us.
Inside your modern bank nowadays is a cavernous space with nothing in it but a couple of machines, perhaps a television and a person whose job it is to wrangle the customers into submission by asking you what you want to do. Then they tell you that you can do it online.
One cashier
Then you tell them that you don’t want to do it online. Or that you don’t know how to do it online. Or that you have concerns about security online.
Then they direct you to the cashier section – once the heart of any bank. There is one cashier. There is a queue. You queue. That is , if everything goes well.
A friend of mine rebelled. He was in a city-centre branch at lunchtime, 14 people were in the queue and one cashier’s hatch was open. He refused to tell the man who was trying to break up the queue what his business was. His business was private.
“I had a bit of a Larry David moment,” he says. He rehearsed the last couple of years of bank history in this country and told the bank employee that, as things had turned out, he would have been better putting his money in the attic.
“You know how it is in these situations,” he says modestly. “ You become a bit of a folk hero.” The other 13 people in the queue started to talk about how that member of the bank staff was “here every lunchtime” . Because the banks want you at home, doing all their clerical work for them online. It’s simple really.
I know the name of the man with the last old-fashioned bank book in Dún Laoghaire. The bank has tried for years to get it off him but he won’t surrender it – and this man is a bit of a computer whiz and could do online banking if he wished.
Still, the screws continue to tighten on your inconvenient live customer who is, as we all know, a loser.
A local businesswoman ran down to open an account in a local bank. She had a cheque for €5,000 with her and all her documentation. “A lady with a clipboard gave me someone’s card and said we could make an appointment for Thursday.” This was Tuesday. Thursday is this businesswoman’s busiest day. She went elsewhere.
Or take bank transfers as one mad and exotic example. Bank Of Ireland won’t do them – since October 2012, the bank’s head office said in an official statement. The statement, which was kindly and swiftly issued at my request, said Bank of Ireland is “committed to communities nationwide” and staying in them when other banks leave.
All I wanted to do was send a small sum to a German company. “Oh we don’t do bank transfers,” said the customer wrangler, who never did volunteer his name. “Under €3,000. You can do that online.”
I left the bank. Then I went back into the bank. What about other banks? I asked. Surely they do bank transfers. The customer wrangler said he didn’t know.
I crossed the road, walked 20 yards and found that Ulster Bank will do a transfer to Germany, if I open a bank account with them, for 51 cent.
A colleague has a similar experience in Galway. “I hadn’t been in a bank for ages,” she said – she is not a member of the Resistance. She owed someone €500 and her bank told her that it was “ not possible to do a bank transfer to another bank. You have to do that online.”
My colleague had no problem with that. But she was required to register her mobile phone number online. It was going to take five working days for the activation code for the mobile phone to be issued. It was then going to take two working days for the transfer itself to be cleared.
In the end my colleague handed the woman to whom she owed money a cheque. She asked the customer wrangler what happened with older customers, or in areas of the country where there is no broadband coverage.
It’s like this: the taxpayer bailed out the banks. In return the banks’ live customers are being hunted down like dogs. All we are saying is – give peace a chance.
Anglo Irish Bank- Latest updates
Former Anglo Irish Bank boss to stand trial in October 2014
Irish Examiner
Sean FitzPatrick, the former Anglo Irish Bank chairman, will stand trial in October of next year. He faces 12 charges of failing to tell the bank’s auditors the true value loans worth €139m given to him, or people connected to him, by Irish Nationwide …
See all stories on this topic »
Former Anglo Irish Bank boss to stand trial in October 2014
Irish Examiner
Sean FitzPatrick, the former Anglo Irish Bank chairman, will stand trial in October of next year. He faces 12 charges of failing to tell the bank’s auditors the true value loans worth €139m given to him, or people connected to him, by Irish Nationwide …
See all stories on this topic »
Central Bank and regulator ‘egging us on’ – Anglo
Irish Independent
But in the latest Anglo Tapes, head of treasury John Bowe can be heard convincing himself that the Central Bank and Financial Regulator were “effectively egging us on – for Irish banks to help each other”. Mr Bowe planned to craft a document to …
See all stories on this topic »
We are a complete punchbag at this stage, says Drumm
Irish Independent
During the revealing conversations, it is clear that Mr Drumm knows at this stage that the fate ofAnglo and Ireland are now bound together inextricably. But he is obviously more concerned about the survival of his own bank. In this latest tape, Mr …
See all stories on this topic »
Anglo Irish Bank
Drumm names eight he believes should explain bank guarantee role
Irish Independent
In his latest interview, former Anglo Irish Bank chief executive Mr Drumm again refused to say whether he would return to Ireland to answer questions on the collapse of the lender. The US-based ex-banker said he believes the explosive Anglo tapes were …
See all stories on this topic »
Independent party to investigate source of Anglo tapes leak
Irish Times
The investigation will try to establish if the tapes, published by the Irish Independent last week, came from Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, which was established to wind down Anglo’s operations, or KPMG, Anglo’s special liquidators. The recordings …
See all stories on this topic »
Trial of Anglo executives ‘has been jeopardised’Irish Independent
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Certus and Pepper get green light to handle €24bn of NAMA loansIrish Independent
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Outrage on rise in Ireland over ‘arrogant’ failed bank execsCanadian HR Reporter |
200 hand letter to gardaí demanding Anglo charges
http://starlounge.ie.msn.com/
garethmoore. TWO HUNDRED PEOPLE handed formal letters to gardaí at Pearse St garda station this evening calling for charges to brought against three Anglo Irish Bank staff. The letter, as seen by TheJournal.ie, calls for an investigation under section …
See all stories on this topic »
| Noonan warns against ‘contaminating’ Anglo evidence Irish Times Minister for Finance Michael Noonan has warned against “mucking about” with recordings leaked from Anglo Irish Bank so as to ensure the evidence needed for criminal trials related to the failed lender is not contaminated. “The guards are the people who … See all stories on this topic » |
| Gilmore refuses to answer questions on Anglo tapes knowledge Irish Independent TANAISTE Eamon Gilmore has declined to answer calls to say who knew what and when about taped conversations between chiefs at the bust Anglo Irish Bank. Related Articles. Dukes ‘sang dumb’ about Anglo tapes, Dail hears. Also in this section … See all stories on this topic » |
Anglo Irish Bank – Updates
Coming Soon to a Cinema Near you Bankula
Starring
David Drumm
The Undisputed Master of Horror Banking
Honohan – Anglo Tapes could lead to criminal prosecutionsIrish Independent
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US firm of disgraced former Anglo boss shut by authorities
THE US firm set up by disgraced former Anglo Irish Bank boss David Drumm has been dissolved after he failed to file any company records over the last two years. read full article
independent.ie
Ireland President Michael D Higgins slams those involved with the Anglo Irish …IrishCentral
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Noonan: Sanctions against anyone who fails to cooperate with banking inquiryIrish Independent
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Family defend Lenihan after Drumm attack on Anglo TapesIrish Independent |
Anglo tapes: Department of Finance records may provide answers to disturbing …Irish Times
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Matt Cooper attacked by Drumm for Haughey comparisonIrish Independent |
Fionnan Sheahan: Apologies are all well and good – but Drumm must face the …Irish Independent |
Time for Drumm to return and face questions after ‘sorry’
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‘Lenihan acted in Ireland’s interests unlike Taoiseach’Herald.ie |
We’ll help gardai with probe, says Bank governor
THE Central Bank is examining whether Anglo Irish Bank “deliberately misrepresented” its position when it sought taxpayer support in 2008, according to the Governor Patrick Ho read full article
Ministers fear inquiry will prejudice future trials
CABINET ministers are worried about an Oireachtas banking inquiry, or witnesses before it, jeopardising any cases against former Anglo Irish Bank officials.read full article
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Letter #4 to Goldman Sachs’s Lloyd Blankfein
Letter #4 to Goldman Sachs‘s Lloyd Blankfein
Posted: 25 Jun 2013 07:18 AM PDT
In this book of letters written by ordinary people affected by the fallout from the financial crisis is a chapter devoted to Goldman Sachs starting on page 91.
The fourth letter is from page 95 in The Trouble is the Banks: Letters to Wall Street, edited by Mark Greif, Dayna Tortorici, Kathleen French, Emma Janaskie and Nick Werle, printed in paperback edition by n +1 Research Branch Small Books Series #4, 2012, New York, NY.
Here is letter #4:
An Opportunity
To: Lloyd C. Blankfein, Goldman Sachs
Dear Mr. Blankfein,
We are writing to you to interest you in a fantastic new opportunity for you and your loved ones. We are offering you the once in a lifetime opportunity to refinance all of your many homes and/or jets for the wealth–oops, did I say wealth–equity that you are holding in them.
Did you know that the property you bought for millions is actually worth gazillions of dollars under this plan? Yes! Gazillions! With our excellent and trustworthy panel of advisors we can help you truly capitalize on your investments and really make the most of what life has to offer.
What we do is: take the money you “earned” during those fantastic boom years, and invest it in schools, hospitals, housing and jobs for the poor, educate feed and clothe people before their brief yet worthy lives extinguish.
There really is nothing to lose from your side: just take the money backed by the assets of the houses, jets, boats and jewelry, sign your name, and we can provide you with short-term aspirations! It really is that simple. And don’t take our word for it, talk to many of our other customers in the 1% base range. Plenty of satisfaction all round!
With Such Sincerely Tepid Regards,
Letter #3 to Goldman Sachs’s Edith W. Cooper
In this book of letters written by ordinary people affected by the fallout from the financial crisis is a chapter devoted to Goldman Sachs starting on page 91.
The third letter is from page 94 in The Trouble is the Banks: Letters to Wall Street, edited by Mark Greif, Dayna Tortorici, Kathleen French, Emma Janaskie and Nick Werle, printed in paperback edition by n +1 Research Branch Small Books Series #4, 2012, New York, NY.
Here is letter #3
Hello Edith–Wow, Now I Know a 1 Percenter!
To: Edith W. Cooper*, Goldman Sachs
Greetings Edith,
I hope this message finds you well. Gosh, I am thrilled to meet you, even though we haven’t met face-to-face…yet!
I mean, wow, I actually know a 1 percenter now! How cool is this?
Of course, you probably don’t have much to worry about even if you’re not feeling well, because I trust that you have great health insurance–thanks to me helping pay for it.
Wow, Edith, how great is that! 🙂
Since I hope we get to know one another better, here’s a little bit of info about me: I have a degree in journalism and my hubby has a double Master’s in music, but since we’re over 50 years old, our premiums climbed, so we were faced with a slippery slope choice…Do we eat, or do we pay for health insurance? It was a toss-up, but we decided that food was more important.
Oh wait–you haven’t heard about our foreclosure? Law enforcement came to our door and gave us one hour to vacate! Oh, that morning was so much fun–I wish you could have been there! Yes, we were in that first wave in ’08, after putting down a down payment of…wait for it…$300,000.
We totally qualified, you see…hubby had a great business, until his clients could no longer pay him…Our lender told us “don’t worry, we want to work with you! We can see you have never been in trouble before!”–and well, it’s a long story.
I’ll save the rest of this story for next time, because I am so looking forward to writing back again..very, very soon.
Your new pen pal,
Hilary Grant
P.S. I can’t wait to hear about the beautiful clothes you must wear. I buy all of my clothes these days at thrift stores, but maybe we can compare notes?
*Edith W. Cooper is Executive Vice President and Global Head of Human Capital Management for Goldman Sachs
Letter #2 to Goldman Sachs’s Lloyd Blankfein
Letter #2 to Goldman Sachs‘s Lloyd Blankfein In this book of letters written by ordinary people affected by the fallout from the financial crisis is a chapter devoted to Goldman Sachs starting on page 91. The second letter is from page 93 in The Trouble is the Banks: Letters to Wall Street, edited by Mark Greif, Dayna Tortorici, Kathleen French, Emma Janaskie and Nick Werle, printed in paperback edition by n +1 Research Branch Small Books Series #4, 2012, New York, NY.
Here is letter #2: $9,165 an hour–Wow Lloyd, You’re a Big Earner To: Lloyd C. Blankfein, Goldman Sachs
Hi Lloyd,
So I just read online that your salary in 2010–including all of those delightful perks that just put a smile on one’s face–is $19.06 million. And your hourly wage is $9,165. That’s great! Do you even collect that much when you take lunch? Do you realize that by working a mere two hours you earn as much as someone who works full-time at minimum wage earns in a year? Wondering if I could have your job for say, three hours a week. Would that be too much to ask? You can leave the stuff that you don’t like about your job to me: talking to the press about Occupy Wall Street, testifying at hearings about board members who are charged with insider trading. You know, all that icky stuff. You can still wheel-and-deal and be your macho master-of-the-universe self. I’ll just do the three hours of grunt work you don’t like each week. What do you say, Lloyd? Deal?
Susie Meriden, CT
What Goldman Sachs Stands For.
Goldman Sachs Has Already Cannibalized the Economy
Two very different views of what Goldman Sachs stands for.
How Goldman Sachs sees itself as
–an “enduring brand;”
–the best investment company;
–highly rated;
–“our clients’ interests always come first;”
–“a set of core values;”
–a match between cultures and behaviors;
–self-renewing;
–“greedy, but long-term greedy;”
–now “greedy, but short-term greedy” (i.e., greedy all the time!)
How we see Goldman Sachs
–predatory;
–parasitical;
–casino capitalists;
–crooked;
–too big to jail; too big to fail;
–fraudulent;
–criminal;
–high rollers;
–screwer of public sector;
–financial oligarchs;
–funder of corporate raiders;
— supporter of takeover artists;
–gamblers;
–a rip-off of the system
What does ‘Euro’ mean?
What does ‘Euro’ mean?
Is a euro in a Cypriot bank, locked down by withdrawal limits and capital controls, the same as a euro in an Irish or French bank? Is a euro sitting in, say, a payroll account in Laiki with a balance of more than €100,000 (and subject to an unspecified “haircut” on Thursday) the same an “Irish euro”?
They’re both euro, both promises to pay the bearer, but honestly, do you have a preference? Of course you do. You’d prefer your money to be outside Cyprus. You’d prefer an Irish euro to a Cypriot one. So they’re not the same. Do we even have a single currency now, then? What does the Euro mean?
And how did this happen? At least in part, it happened because all the finance ministers of the Eurozone sat around earlier this month and let the Cypriots leave the room with a proposal to make depositors pay for bank losses, including insured depositors with balances of less than €100,000. They rowed back on that part, but you can’t undo the damage of their having taken it seriously to begin with. Imagine a snowed-in family just once agreeing “if we get really hungry, we can eat the rabbit”. You can take that back all you like – everybody knows the rabbit’s not safe any more. He’s not just a pet, he’s protein. Depositors aren’t just protected customers now, they’re also a source of money to save the bank.
We sat back and let that happen – all the Eurozone countries did. We let deposits in Cyprus undergo that subtle shift in meaning. We let their banks be closed for ages, with devastating impact on small firms and families. We let their tax rate be changed. We let them hang out there, hoping it would save us, the rest of this uneasy union. Where does that leave solidarity, in this European Project under our presidency?
Just now, you’d prefer an Irish euro to a Cypriot one. Remember that feeling, because, as Martin Niemöller might have written were he more interested in money, and living in more peaceful times, “First they came for the Cypriots …”
via Irish Politics, Current Affairs and Magazine Archive – Politico.ie | What does ‘Euro’ mean?.
via Irish Politics, Current Affairs and Magazine Archive – Politico.ie | What does ‘Euro’ mean?.
World Bank refuses to review support for logging in tropical rainforests despite criticism from its own independent evaluators
The World Bank Board of Directors has blocked a call by independent evaluators to review the outcomes of the Bank’s support for industrial-scale logging in tropical rainforests. The evaluators concluded in a report published last Friday that such operations have not been effective in reducing poverty, the World Bank’s core mandate, or achieving sustainability. Despite these findings, the Board voted unanimously against a recommendation that the Bank review the effectiveness of its support for tropical forest logging.
“The very survival of tropical forests and the way of life of people who live in them is under threat, and the World Bank is in denial about its contribution to the problem,” said Rick Jacobsen of Global Witness. “As a public institution tasked with reducing poverty, the World Bank should take very seriously its own evaluators’ finding that its approach is not helping vulnerable forest communities. It’s time for the Bank to stop defending destructive logging practices in the name of development benefits that never materialize.”
“After 10 years of World Bank-led reforms in the DRC, roughly 150,000 km2 of rainforest remain in the hands of poorly regulated international logging companies, while communities are once again being left behind,” said Susanne Breitkopf of Greenpeace International. The reform process in the DRC has been marred with irregularities and widely criticized; meanwhile, a law that would support community management of forests has been stalled for years, and the Bank is financing a forest zoning process that is likely to earmark huge areas of rainforest for industrial logging.
While the Bank fiercely rejected the evaluators’ criticism of its support for industrial-scale logging in the tropics, it accepted seven other recommendations made in the report. Two of these focused on the need to provide more support for forest-dependent communities to allow them to directly manage their own forest resources. The Bank has not yet indicated how it plans to implement these recommendations. Breitkopf remains skeptical: “In order to reduce poverty and deforestation, the Bank needs to put land rights and community forest management at front and center of its projects, rather than making them cosmetic add-ons.”
Contact:
Rick Jacobsen, Team Leader, International Forest Policy, Global Witness
+1 415 699 9504, rjacobsen@globalwitness.org
Susanne Breitkopf, Senior Political Advisor, Greenpeace International
+1 202 390 5586, susanne.breitkopf@greenpeace.org
Notes to editors:
The Committee of the Development Effectiveness (CODE) of the World Bank Board of Executive Directors was responsible for the decision and currently includes the Executive Directors of Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Sweden, United Kingdom and Zambia.
The World Bank’s Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) is responsible for carrying out independent evaluations of World Bank operations and reports directly to the Committee on Development Effectiveness (CODE) of the World Bank Board of Directors. The IEG evaluation and responses from World Bank management and CODE are available here: http://ieg.worldbankgroup.org/content/ieg/en/home.html
In late 2010, an Independent Forest Monitor financed by the European Development Fund was appointed by the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo to monitor the quality of law enforcement in the country. The Monitor’s first field reports were published in January 2013 and are available in French at the following website: http://www.observation-rdc.info/Rapports.html#7
The Bank has been instrumental in putting into place policies in many tropical countries that result in widespread logging of tropical rainforests. Yet according to a growing body of evidence, industrial-scale logging contributes to tropical deforestation while doing little to improve the lives of forest-dependent communities and indigenous peoples. Corruption and lack of government oversight further aggravate the problem. In the countries of Africa’s Congo Basin, home to the world’s second largest rainforest next to the Amazon, law enforcement in the logging sector is ineffective and corruption and cronyism are widespread. Recent reports from a government-appointed independent observer in the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, found that many international logging companies are carrying out illegal activities.
America’s TBTF Bank Subsidy From Taxpayers: $83 Billion Per Year
AMERICA’S TBTF BANK SUBSIDY FROM TAXPAYERS: $83 BILLION PER YEAR
It looks like Johnny Citizen in the good old USA is being well and truly screwed
Day after day, whenever anyone challenges the TBTF banks’ scale, they are slammed down with a mutually assured destruction message that limitations would impair profitability and weaken the country’s position in global finance. So what if you were to discover, based on Bloomberg’s calculations, that the largest banks aren’t really profitable at all? What if the billions of dollars they allegedly earn for their shareholders were almost entirely a gift from U.S. taxpayers? The stunning truth is that the top-five banks account for $64 billion of an implicit subsidy based on the ludicrous (but entirely real) logic that: The banks that are potentially the most dangerous can borrow at lower rates, because creditors perceive them as too big to fail. Perhaps this realization will increase shareholder demands – or even political furore? The market discipline might not please executives, but it would certainly be an improvement over paying banks to put us in danger.
WHY YOU SHOULD MARCH ON 9TH FEBRUARY 2013
WHY YOU SHOULD MARCH ON 9TH FEBRUARY 2013
The banking collapse has left the average EU citizen with a bill of €192. Bad enough you might think until you consider that the average Irish citizen will have to cough up €9,000 to rescue the banks. That’s right; it’s not a misprint; there’s not an extra zero in there.
That’s what makes Ireland the “special case” we so often hear about.
That’s why there are protest marches on 9th February.
That’s why you should be there.
Because despite pious platitudes that Ireland is a special case the EU has decided that the European banking crisis must be dealt with by each individual country regardless of size or ability to pay. So much for the idea of a community!
As a result of this, so far Ireland has paid €41 billion, a billion more than Germany. But €41bn is 25% of our economic output (GDP) while in Germany €40bn is just 3% of GDP.
Ireland makes up just 0.9% of the EU population, and the Irish economy makes up 1.2% of the EU’s GDP. But even though we are a tiny part of the EU we have to cough up 42% of the European banking crisis.
All in all the banking bailout is set to cost us €64bn.
Trying to pay this €64bn bank debt is behind five years of austerity.
Trying to pay this bill is costing jobs and driving thousands to emigrate.
Trying to pay this bill is behind increased taxation and more threatened wage cuts.
After five years of austerity we all know that without a bank deal there is no hope of recovery and that continuing with this failed policy will cripple Ireland for generations to come.
We must send a clear message across Europe that we need a deal on debt.
The ICTU Rallies on February 9th 2013 are your chance to send that message and to protest against the cause of our economic crisis – bank debt. A large turnout will show the EU leadership the depth of feeling in Ireland about the issue.
Marches on the afternoon of 9th February are planned in:
misebogland 